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The musical “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” based on the movie of the same name and playing at Paradise Theatre in Gig Harbor, is a silly show about oddly attached con artists.
The old trend of basing movies on Broadway musicals has been revived in recent years to produce a slew of musicals based on hit movies. Some of those are commercially successful but critically mediocre for a couple of reasons.
“Stop Kiss,” written by Diana Son and directed by Elizabeth Lord, is a contemporary drama ending a short run this weekend at The Midnight Sun performance space in Olympia.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy “You Can’t Take it With You” by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart has been sending audiences into paroxysms of laughter since it opened on Broadway in 1936.
Seldom does an American musical come along that defines an era. In the 1950s, it was “West Side Story,” in the ’60s it was “Hair.” Toward the end of the millennium it was “Rent,” which, for the first time this year, has come available to community theaters.
“Over the River and Through the Woods” by Joe DiPietro is billed as a comedy, and DiPietro is best known for writing the books to musicals including “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” and his most recent, “Memphis.”
Olympia Little Theatre’s latest production is “Murderers,” one of many unique plays from the prolific pen of Jeffrey Hatcher, who has given us memorable plays such as “Three Viewings,” “Murder by Poe,” “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” “Compleat Female Stage Beauty,” and the stage adaptation of “Tuesdays With Morrie.”
The musical “Tom Sawyer” at Lakewood Playhouse has all of the charm but none of the bite that has made Mark Twain an enduring favorite for almost 150 years. It’s a lightweight musical comedy that should be just the ticket for post-holiday family entertainment – a kind of nonalcoholic nightcap to the season which mercifully this year spared us most of the endless rounds of “A Christmas Carol” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Harlequin Productions’ “Stardust Homecoming” has everything you could ask for in a musical comedy – except for real excitement.
“Jack and the Beanstalk” is the third-consecutive Christmas season panto at Centerstage in Federal Way.
Lighthearted and comical holiday entertainment is getting to be a habit.
It’s nice to see a Christmas show that doesn’t look like countless sappy, made-for-TV movies.
There is something homey about community theater that invites audience members to feel like they have a stake in the performance.
Playwright Jeffrey Hatcher has adapted or written many horror and mystery stories for the stage, including “Murder by Poe” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” He also wrote the play based on the immensely popular “Tuesdays With Morrie.”
Morrie Schwartz’s wisecracking saves “Tuesdays With Morrie” from being maudlin. But the play now being performed at Lakewood Playhouse is still a tearjerker.
I’ve seen “Nunsense” before but never like this. This performance is not only rolling-in-the-aisles funny and deliciously irreverent, it rocks.
Three years ago, Harlequin Productions put on a performance of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that was the most elaborate and outrageously funny Shakespeare comedy I had ever seen. I would not have believed they could match that performance, but they have with their current show, “As You Like It.”
“Curtains” at Tacoma Musical Playhouse is a murder-mystery musical comedy that played to mixed reviews on Broadway as recently as 2007. It garnered major awards, but also was panned by a number of critics.
“Carl Sagan’s Contact” at Centerstage is the world premiere of an exciting new musical based on Sagan’s novel, with book by Centerstage artistic director Alan Bryce, music by Peter Sipos, and lyrics by Amy Engelhardt. It is directed by Bryce.
There are two things that make murder mysteries – especially of the British variety – insanely popular: complex and surprising plot structures and oddball characters. Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” at Lakewood Playhouse has both in spades.
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© Copyright 2010 Tacoma News, Inc. A subsidiary of The McClatchy Company
1950 South State Street, Tacoma, Washington 98405 253-597-8742
© Copyright 2010 Tacoma News, Inc. A subsidiary of The McClatchy Company